> Musk talked Trump and Rubio into doing and they did.

which is illegal. USAID can only be "shut down" by an act of Congress

> Trump and Rubio [...] did.

Might be illegal.

> Musk talked Trump and Rubio

Obviously isn't, no matter how many salutes he does or how many emeralds he owns.

It is debatable.

Can Congress constitutionally force the President to spend money the President doesn’t want to spend?

There is a lack of recent SCOTUS precedents on the topic, and you can’t assume the current SCOTUS majority will answer “Yes”. If they answer “No”, then the USAID shutdown is likely legal.

> There is a lack of recent SCOTUS precedents on the topic

How recent do you need? Nixon already tested this one and lost at the SC.

Train vs City of New York is almost as old as Roe v Wade. I wouldn’t assume a 50+ year old precedent would be upheld by today’s majority.

Plus, Train v City of New York didn’t actually consider the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act. It was about an impoundment decision made prior to that Act, under the rules in force before it. And although SCOTUS held the EPA’s impoundment action (directed by Nixon) to be illegal in this specific case, they didn’t rule on the validity of impoundments in general. In part, the case turned on the wording of the specific appropriation being impounded, and so it might not apply to another appropriation worded differently. Also, upholding congressional limits on presidential impoundment power in the context of one specific appropriation doesn’t mean they’d necessarily uphold the much broader limits on that power imposed by the Impoundment Control Act.

Another factor is this case was about direct grants to the states. It is plausible that SCOTUS might decide that (following Train), the states have the right to direct grants appropriated to them by Congress, yet still hold the President has some constitutional impoundment right in distinguishable cases

It is not debateable at all, the President has to ask Congress to rescind appropriated funds if the President doesn’t want to spend the money allocated by Congress. If Congress chooses not to rescind the allocated funds, then the president must spend the money.

The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974 is explicitly clear about this, there is absolutely no room for debate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Imp...

> Title X of the Act, also known as the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, specifies that the president may request that Congress rescind appropriated funds. If both the Senate and the House of Representatives have not approved a rescission proposal (by passing legislation) within forty-five days of continuous session, any funds being withheld must be made available for obligation. Congress is not required to vote on the request and has ignored most presidential requests.

> The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974 is explicitly clear about this, there is absolutely no room for debate.

Yes, but is that Act constitutional? Has SCOTUS upheld its constitutionality? That’s where there absolutely is room for debate.

Has the government's right to mow down civilians with helicopter-mounted machine guns been tested in the Supreme Court lately?

That's where there absolutely is room for debate.

This argument can apply to literally anything.

It is different though.

There are law journal articles debating whether the Impoundment Control Act is constitutional. And that isn’t a new thing, here’s one from 1990: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/...

There’s a big difference between a law for which there have been longstanding serious scholarly objections to its constitutionality, and a law whose constitutionality has never been questioned in any serious forum

Really? Because SCOTUS actually ruled the President very well might be immune from any criminal repercussions from mowing down civilians from a helicopter-mounted machine gun.

Seems like there’s at least “a debate” to be had.

It hasn’t been tested at the Supreme Court level, no.

However, other presidential administrations have worked within the framework of the law and requested that Congress rescind funding instead of running roughshod over the law and unilaterally attempting to defund programs and canceling spending that was authorized by Congress.

We’ll likely get a Supreme Court case testing the CBIA of 1974, we’ll soon find out what these 9 justices think about it.

>It is not debateable at all, the President has to ask Congress to rescind appropriated funds if the President doesn’t want to spend the money allocated by Congress. If Congress chooses not to rescind the allocated funds, then the president must spend the money.

What people don't understand is that the President is essentially an Administrator (Executer of the laws passed by Congress), not a Decider.

The problem now is that Congress will not impeach or convict him for breaking the law.

> Can Congress constitutionally force the President to spend money the President doesn’t want to spend?

Congress holds the power of the purse, so they aren't "forcing" the President, the President has no say in the matter

Almost every President until Nixon claimed the constitutional right to impound appropriations, and actually did it. And Congress often objected, but what could they do? Until Nixon did it so much, that Congress passed a law against it. And Nixon decided to sign the law, because he wanted to put the controversy over his own impoundments behind him. And from then until now, even if some Presidents questioned the constitutionality of that law, they decided to abide by it. Until finally, now in the second Trump administration, Trump has listened to conservative legal scholars arguing that the law is unconstitutional, and decided to adopt their argument and ignore it. And likely SCOTUS will decide its constitutionality as a result. But you make a decades-old debate sound like something that has a completely obvious answer. If the answer is as simple and obvious as you think it is, how did almost every President up to and including Nixon get it wrong?

From first principles, congress is given power of the purse. If the president can just ignore congress' direction and refuse to use the money they allocated, do you believe that congress still has power of the purse?

From first principles, the American Founding Fathers were largely copying the design of the British system (as they understood it), but with an elected President replacing the King. In the British system, Parliament could stop the King from spending money – but the power was about stopping the King from spending as he liked, not forcing him to spend when he didn't wish to. The English Civil War was fought over the principle that the King couldn't spend money without Parliament's authorisation; the issue of Parliament trying to force the King to spend money when he didn't want to spend it simply never came up.

Hence, look at the Appropriations Clause of the US Constitution (Article I Section 9 Clause 7): "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law..." That's a negative clause, a prohibition on the Executive spending money without legal authorisation; nowhere does it explicitly say that Congress can force the President to spend money when he doesn't want to spend it.

For most of the term's history, "the power of the purse" was understood as the ability of the legislature to limit government spending; the idea that it also entails the ability of the legislature to compel the executive to spend money which it doesn't wish to spend is much newer.